@Balrog - relative trends don’t always describe performance within the bounds of an application.
I personally would say the problem you’re seeing is a lot of folks talking about trends, without real experience, and speculating off-map about sea dragons and the Edge of the World.
Fact: FMJ’s penetrate more than JHP’s and poly tipped bullets.
Non-sequitur conclusion some folks might draw from that fact: poly tipped bullets and JHP’s may not penetrate enough.
It’s silly. Semi-tractors have more horsepower than pick-up trucks, but I don’t need a Peterbilt to pull my johnboat to the lake. FMJ’s penetrate further than Vmax’s, but vmax’s typically will exit in a coyote, so the extra penetration of the FMJ is just penetrating air and dirt. The advantage here is more Work is done inside the animal by the Vmax, and they fall dead faster, and closer to the point of impact.
Fact(s): m193 fragments. JHP’s fragment. Poly tipped bullets fragment.
Non-sequitur conclusion drawn by folks who haven’t killed anything with these rounds to compare wounding: They all fragment, so they’re the same.
What’s true in the real world: poly tipped bullets get forced open immediately upon impact, with only a couple inches of penetration before violently opening while retaining inertia for straight line penetration. JHP’s delay this violent expansion a bit, as the tip has to deform of its own accord to motivate the bullet to open, so it penetrates slightly farther before opening - after which, like the poly tip, the bullet violently opens, and like the poly tip the retained mass of the core/shank penetrates relatively straight. FMJ’s, however, don’t have any opportunity to open. Fragmentation only happens after the bullet has penetrated far enough to find a reason to tumble, at which point the bullet falls apart willy-nilly, planing and cartwheeling, flinging chunks here and there nearly randomly. So when a Vmax enters a coyote, it gets through hide and ribs, and by the time it’s 2” deep, it starts throwing hate on everything around it. Much like a bunker buster missile. JHP’s might pass twice as deep before performing largely the same. M193 is known to typically penetrate more than 4-5” before it starts to tumble, at which part it comes apart like an egg on the sidewalk. Bullet destruction wastes energy, and the tumbling and random direction fragmentation doesn’t propagate as much temporary cavity trauma.
If someone is attacking you - which would you prefer: a round which enters and starts laying hate immediately, opening a massive trauma tract before it even reaches the centerline of the body, creating a temporary cavity nearly centered within the confines of the body, or a bullet which enters, slips to the center of the vital zone, then finally decides to start doing something? If you consider the temporary cavity to be a bomb, do I want my bomb centered on the centerline of my target, or centered on the backside surface?
